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Cisco® UCS C-Series Rack-Mount Servers extend unified computing innovations to an industry-standard form factor to help reduce total cost of ownership (TCO) and increase business agility. Designed to operate both in standalone environments and as part of the Cisco Unified Computing System™, the series employs Cisco technology to help customers handle the most challenging workloads. The series incorporates a standards-based unified network fabric, Cisco VN-Link virtualization support, and Cisco Extended Memory Technology. It supports an incremental deployment model and protects customer investments with a future migration path to unified computing.

The Cisco UCS C250 M2 Extended-Memory Rack-Mount Server is a two-socket, two-rack-unit (2RU) rack-mount server featuring patented Cisco Extended Memory Technology (Figure 1). It is designed to increase performance and capacity for demanding virtualization and large-data-set workloads. It also can reduce the cost of smaller memory footprints. This server is built for virtualized workloads in enterprise data centers, service provider environments, and virtual desktop hosting. The system also helps increase performance for large-data-set workloads, including database management systems and modeling and simulation applications. Applications that are memory bound today will benefit from the 384 GB of addressable memory that the Cisco UCS C250 M2 server offers.

Building on the success of the Cisco UCS C250 M1 Extended-Memory Rack-Mount Server, the Cisco UCS C250 M2 server extends the capabilities of the Cisco Unified Computing System with the next generation of Intel processor technology: Intel® Xeon® 5600 series processors. These powerful processors deliver more cores, threads, and cache, all within a similar power envelope, with even faster payback, greater productivity, and better energy efficiency than preceding models. When put into production, Cisco Unified Computing System and Intel Xeon 5600 series processors together offer further reductions in TCO, increased business agility, and another big leap forward in data center virtualization.

Figure 1. Cisco UCS C250 M2 Server

Applications

With 48 DIMM slots available, the Cisco UCS C250 M2 server design is unique among two-socket servers based on Intel Xeon 5600 series processors. From a memory-capacity perspective, it can alleviate memory bottlenecks in situations in which costly four-socket servers might otherwise be necessary, helping improve the price-to-performance ratio for running large-memory-footprint applications. From a memory-cost perspective, the server can be populated with low-cost 4-GB DIMMs for a total of up to 192 GB of main memory; this memory configuration delivers a memory footprint that other two-socket, Intel Xeon 5600 series processor–based systems require 16-GB DIMMS to achieve. The server also can be populated with 8-GB DIMMs for a total of up to 384 GB of memory.

These benefits of Cisco Extended Memory Technology can be harnessed by customers when very large memory footprints are required, or when large, low-cost memory footprints are desirable, as in the following examples:

●Large virtualized environments can host more or larger virtual machines with the server’s larger memory footprint, and with higher performance in cases in which existing implementations are memory bound.

●Database applications will thrive in virtualized and nonvirtualized environments, as the server uses the combination of a large memory footprint and the fastest Intel processors

●Traditional high-performance computing (HPC) applications can benefit from the server’s performance and memory footprint, including memory-intensive engineering design automation (EDA) and geophysical modeling applications. EDA applications and oil and seismic applications can now expand beyond the 144-GB memory capacity of other two-socket servers, and the applications can be accelerated with a larger (384 GB) or a more economical (192 GB) memory footprint. Other memory-bound HPC applications are likely to see performance acceleration on a Cisco UCS C250 M2 server.

●Enterprise resource planning (ERP) applications can run with improved performance with large data sets in main memory when hosted on the Cisco UCS C250 M2 server.

Features and Benefits

The Cisco UCS C250 M2 server extends Cisco unified computing innovations—including Cisco Extended Memory Technology—to an industry-standard, rack-mount form factor. It is the first rack-mount server available anywhere with a built-in future migration path to unified computing. It increases customer choice by providing unique benefits in a rack-mount server, bringing differentiation and value to what has traditionally been a market with products not optimized to meet the needs of virtualized data centers. Table 1 summarizes the features and benefits of the Cisco UCS C250 M2 server.

Table 1.Features and Benefits

Feature

Benefit

Cisco Extended Memory Technology

●Up to 384 GB of main memory using 8-GB DIMMs or 192 GB of main memory with 4-GB DIMMs

●Automated energy efficiency that reduces energy costs by automatically putting the processor and memory in the lowest available power state while still delivering the performance required

●Flexible virtualization technology that optimizes performance for virtualized environments, including processor support for migration and direct I/O

●With more cores, threads, and cache in a similar power envelope, the Cisco Unified Computing System and Intel Xeon 5600 series processors together offer further reductions in TCO, increased business agility, and another big leap forward in data center virtualization

●Cisco C-series servers keep pace with Intel Xeon processor innovation by offering the latest series 5600 processors with an increase in processor frequency and improved security features. With the increased clock speed, the Intel Xeon 5600 series based UCS C-Series rack mount servers will offer improved price/performance making UCS servers one of the best values in the industry.